Our study is based on sea level incursion projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Internet infrastructure deployment data from Internet Atlas. We align the data formats and assess risks in terms of the amount and type of infrastructure that will be under water in different time intervals over the next 100 years.

We find that 4,067 miles of fiber conduit will be under water and 1,101 nodes (e.g., points of presence and colocation centers) will be surrounded by water in the next 15 years. We further quantify the risks of sea level rise by defining a metric that considers the combination of geographic scope and Internet infrastructure density. We use this metric to examine different regions and find that the New York, Miami, and Seattle metropolitan areas are at highest risk. We also quantify the risks to individual service provider infrastructures and find that CenturyLink, Inteliquent, and AT&T are at highest risk. While it is difficult to project the impact of countermeasures such as sea walls, our results suggest the urgency of developing mitigation strategies and alternative infrastructure deployments.

I suspect some adaptation might occur, if rising sea levels actually were to swamp internet equipment.

Of course, now that we adjust the sea level to maintain a constant volume (GIA adjustment), even though the size of the receptacle which holds the ocean changes, sea level will have less and less to do with the actual sea level. In a couple hundred years, we might actually notice that.

Couple of points to ponder. First, this paper seems to be talking about worst case scenarios. Please remember that an extreme low pressure event like storm Sandy can bring sea level up way more than a foot above previous high water marks, and that Sandy was a worst case scenario that most people were not ready for, because most people didn’t understand that our climate is changing.

Second, the corrosivity of water to fiber optics is not understood by most people. I used to do research on this. I would wind fiber optics, made by the company that I worked for, around different sized mandrels, put them into various constant moisture chamber that I put together, and observe how long the various fibers took to break. And break they did, in a really short time. So don’t be stupid about the risk to infrastructure that is being studied here. Water and water vapor is corrosive to fiber optics. I don’t know what fiber optics look like today, or how they are or are not coated, but I sincerely doubt that flooding non-submersible fiber optics can come to any good.

Third, I can’t help but think about a really poor decision made by the magazine Scientific American a few years ago. In that particular issue, I think that it was October 2001, they ran a story that predicted that New Orleans would be flooded by a catastrophic storm, and that thousands would die, and that it would happen soon. The poor decision that the magazine made, IMO, was to have a cover illustration of some flashy astronomical event. They should have, instead, had an illustration predicting what a flooded New Orleans would look like. They would have probably garnered some attention to the problem at hand , and maybe saved some lives, and also showed the value of science and scientific study. Instead, they went for the flashy meteorite picture , and missed the opportunity of the decade to become a more powerful voice for science. In the case of this current article, I hope that the authors didn’t go for the flashy title, and therefore make it look like they were just grandstanding.

The article that Greg has drawn to our attention is worth looking at, because it points out a potentially came changing achilles heel in our technological infrastructure. Presumably, people in the internet and telecommunications industries will take note and take precautionary measures, because if they don’t, or they can’t, we have the potential for a future internet meltdown, and a return to primitive living.

This scenario is recommended
by the NOAA report as the most appropriate for
situations with low risk-tolerance,

It is an interesting read and an interesting first examination. It’s a shame the two resident science deniers joke about it instead of reading it, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t read it because they aren’t capable of understanding any of it — that’s what their history indicates.

” sea level will have less and less to do with the actual sea level.”
Can sombebody parse that for me? I’m not a lawyrer. I don’t get it.

” In a couple hundred years, we might actually notice that.” I don’t expect any of us to be alive in a couple of hundred years. Maybe you think that you will be, but I rather doubt it.

Look, when people with sharp minds and a lot of data study a problem, and they come to the conclusion that we have an emerging ( or in this case, a submerging ) problem, I just can’t say enough bad things about people who mock them out of hand. I guess that the mockers cannot recognize that they only have a tenuous grasp of the problem.

Hand waving, mocking, belittling, praying, etc., are not much good when rising sea levels ( almost a foot in the last century around NYC) are exacerbated by an unusually large storm ( like super storm Sandy) with a very low pressure area, an on shore wind, and incoming tides. Many people in previously safe areas around NYC were killed or were rendered homeless by this combination. Subway tubes in lower Manhattan were submerged. You don’t need a permanent sea level rise to create havoc.

I think that it is possible that because right wingers and authoritarians in general are largely guided by fear based thinking, they interpret a scientific report projecting possible disaster as some nefarious effort to manipulate them with fear. And they go into full reaction mode, guns blazing, killing any chance of dialogue. We are talking about situations with low risk tolerance here . We are talking here about civil engineers who did not factor a steadily and more rapidly rising sea level into their calculations and who have, as a result, put parts of the internet at serious risk. Based on their use of the flawed projections of their day, their mistakes can be readily understood. Justifying those mistakes with far more serious mistakes, well, that probably has more to do with right wing political correctness than anything else.

The GIA correction pretends that the volume of the ocean container is constant. So if the ocean bottom deepens or rises and the water level is raised or lowered because the size of the container the ocean is sitting in was modified by some geological process, an adjustment is made to the sea level.

Over time, the GIA corrected sea level number will depart further and further from tide gauges, which are automatically adjusted to the sea surface and therefore do not take subsistence or glacier rebound into account.

Someday, the GIA sea level will say New York is under 7 feet of water, but you standing on the sea shore will be looking around and wondering what they are talking about. As we move forward in time, the GIA adjusted sea level will depart from reality.

Perhaps I am just really stupid (I know you will all agree with this) – but I don’t get the GIA adjustment. What matters is the sea level that the tide gauges see, which is what makes your feet wet and floods your basement. Not some hypothetical sea level, adjusted to remove all activity of geological processes, which spread the sea floor, make the ocean floor rise or fall, or the shoreline rise or fall.

Of course, that is just my personal opinion.

Project ahead a few centuries and you might find the GIA sea level number is really out of wack with the sea level you see standing at any USA harbor.

As has been pointed out, storm surges take quite modest SLR rise and weaponise it against costal infrastructure. Since SLR is effectively unstoppable and set to accelerate as the century progresses, it represents a very serious and ever-growing threat to all coastal infrastructure, from nuclear power stations to cities to roads and rail links to electricity, water, oil and gas distribution, major sewage processing plant, lowland agriculture (soil salination) etc.

You just can’t cope with the reality of climate impacts so you go into denial.

Perhaps I am just really stupid (I know you will all agree with this) – but I don’t get the GIA adjustment.

As far as I can tell from the apparent muddle of your other posts on GIA, the person who needs to read the link is you:

There are many different scientific questions that are being asked where GMSL measurements can contribute. We are focused on just a few of these:

How is the volume of the ocean changing?
How much of this is due to thermal expansion?
How much of this is due to addition of water that was previously stored as ice on land?

In order to answer these questions, we have to account for the fact that the ocean is actually getting bigger due to GIA at the same time as the water volume is expanding. This means that if we measure a change in GMSL of 3 mm/yr, the volume change is actually closer to 3.3 mm/yr because of GIA. Removing known components of sea level change, such as GIA or the solid earth and ocean tides, reveals the remaining signals contained in the altimetry measurement. These can include water volume changes, steric effects, and the interannual variability caused by events such as the ENSO. We apply a correction for GIA because we want our sea level time series to reflect purely oceanographic phenomena. In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes. This is what is needed for comparisons to global climate models, for example, and other oceanographic datasets.

Dear RickA,
I learned about glacial rebound in a Geology class about 20 years ago, and had heard about it long before that. I live near an area known for small glacial rebound quakes. As your cited article indicates, “Including the GIA correction has the effect of increasing previous estimates of the global mean sea level rate by 0.3 mm/yr.”, which amounts to about 10%.

“However, since the ocean basins are getting larger due to GIA, this will reduce by a very small amount the relative sea level rise that is seen along the coasts. To understand the relative sea level effects of global oceanic volume changes (as estimated by the GMSL) at a specific location, issues such as GIA, tectonic uplift, and self attraction and loading (SAL, e.g., Tamisiea et al., 2010), must also be considered.”

It really doesn’t sound like GIA will significantly negate the problems from the current and near future rate of sea level rise.

And I still contend that wading into a subject area outside of ones area of expertise to try to refute or negate what people more familiar with the subject are writing is not going to win anyone any glory here. Maybe at a conservatively politically correct website. Here, IMO, the general belief is that rising sea levels, and large storms driven by local surface temperature warming present problems not only at, but far away from the coast, and they warrant serious examination. The New Jersey coast wasn’t permanently submerged by rising sea levels. But in Sandy, much of it was ripped apart and battered to pieces, often miles away from the coastline. We don’t have to experience an actual foot of rise to be at risk.

And I still contend that wading into a subject area outside of ones area of expertise to try to refute or negate what people more familiar with the subject are writing is not going to win anyone any glory here.

It’s pretty clear, as BBD suggested, that RickA either never read what he linked to (woudn’t be the first time) or didn’t understand any of it (again, wouldn’t be the first time). But there’s a more telling message here.

Denialists like rickA and mikeN could, if they wanted to, get the data and examine things for themselves, but never do. Why? They don’t have the expertise. That’s not a bad thing, many people wouldn’t have the background. But, despite not having the expertise and never examining the data, they think their out-of-hand rejection of the paper’s conclusions should be taken seriously. Why they think that is beyond comprehension.

did glance at the paper and laughed out loud when I got to the table with projections of 1 foot of SLR by 2030 and 2 feet by 2045 (etc.).

That’s not what dean was talking about. As I increasingly expect you know full well.

Or why else the double-dodge?

Embarrassed about not having read the link dean and I are talking about? Or not understanding how GIA is integrated with SLR estimates? No problem, if you just admitted it.

Or was it the other stuff that you didn’t mention? This stuff:

As has been pointed out, storm surges take quite modest SLR rise and weaponise it against costal infrastructure. Since SLR is effectively unstoppable and set to accelerate as the century progresses, it represents a very serious and ever-growing threat to all coastal infrastructure, from nuclear power stations to cities to roads and rail links to electricity, water, oil and gas distribution, major sewage processing plant, lowland agriculture (soil salination) etc.

We had 8 inches last century and are looking at maybe 1 foot by 2100.

That figure falls into the same bucket as <2C ECS estimates, for related reasons.

I notice that when Rick A mentions geological changes affecting the ocean basins or land elevation (post-glacial rebound, for ex.), he seems to implicitly assume that these changes will somehow all be in the direction that lowers sea level in the flood-your-house-or-not context. However, areas such as parts of CA, where tectonic uplift is slowly raising sea level may keep things from more than present danger for a while longer but isn’t decreasing storm surge or tsunami danger, while in slowly subsiding areas such as coastal LA, the danger is increasing every year as two causes of permanent coastal flooding (in human terms) — sea level rise (due to glacial melting and thermal expansion of the water), and sinking of the land (due to isostatic subsidence due to as yet uncompensated weight of the sediment load and to sediment compaction) are combined.

Oh fuck the internet. I mean it’s good people are thinking about infrastructure issues, but really, fuck the american internet. Rich arsehole nuke loving massive polluters can get fucked. No sympathies.
Has um, has anyone seen a chart of oxygen in the oceans at all? Talk about plummet at a very fast fucking rate. Extraordinary.

I guess all that WW2 goodwill has all worn off, eh? I am taking nothing away from the Australian forces but they were outnumbered and lacked the manufacturing capability to maintain resistance for long.

And what about the Americans who are not rich nor polluters. Should we get fucked too? (Why is “getting fucked” considered bad wishes in both countries? It makes no sense.) Could they come to Australia instead?

Even a modest sea level rise makes it harder for rivers in coastal plains to keep to the channels they are currently using, this can lead to changes of course and flooding well away from the coastal margins.

There are other factors that will change with sea level rise and the dynamics, and variety of estuary types are important.

Age, Formation, and Classification of Estuaries

Geologically speaking, estuaries are ephemeral features of the coasts. Upon formation, most begin to fill in with sediments and, in the absence of sea level changes, would have life spans of only a few thousand to tens of thousands of years (Schubel & Hirschberg, 1978). Modern estuaries are recent features that only formed over the past 5,000 to 6,000 years during the stable interglacial period of the middle to late Holocene Epoch (0 – 10,000 y BP) – which followed an extensive rise in sea level at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 My to 10,000 y BP) (Nichols & Biggs, 1985). A sea level rise of approximately 10 mm y-1 during this period resulted in many coastal plains being inundated with water and a displacement of the shoreline. The phenomenon of rising (transgression) and falling (regression) sea level over time is referred to as eustacy (Suess, 1906).

While there is considerable debate about the controls of current sea level changes around the world. we can generally conclude that tectonic conditions, regional subsidence rates, and regional climatic changes account for much of this variation. When factoring in these regional differences, rates of sea level change are referred to as relative sea level (RSL) rise or fall. Along the U.S. Atlantic coast we generally see a more consistent rise in sea level; however, sea level rise in northern regions is significantly slower due to isostatic rebound (the upward movement of the Earth’s crust following isostatic depression), which occurs on many high latitude coastlines around the world (e.g., Scandinavia). On a global scale, it appears that sea level has risen by 12 to 15 cm over the past century (Emery & Aubrey, 1991); this has primarily been attributed to thermal expansion of sea water in response to an increase in global temperatures (Milliman & Haq, 1996). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that from 1990 to 2100 there will be a 48 cm rise in sea level with a range of 9 to 88 cm (Church et al., 2001). The highest average sea level rise in the U.S. occurs along the Gulf Coast near the mouth of the Mississippi River (Louisiana coast) (ca. 9.0 mm y-1), in large part due to high subsidence rates in the region.

I’m glad to see that you included something about the Louisiana problem with even minimal sea level rise in your post. That state does not have a huge population nor do very many people live right along the coast, but the replacement of even low-lying land lying between New Orleans and other LA cities and the Gulf of Mexico by even relatively shallow water decreases preparation time for those cities residents and increases the wind speed of hurricanes and tropical storms when they approach those cities. New Orleans in particular is a very, very important U.S. seaport and significant portions of it are already below the normal level of the Mississippi River and below present sea level. Flooding of that city would have economic repercussions for LA and the entire country and permanent loss would probably require rebuilding a similar city along the new shoreline and/or readjusting many of the nation’s supply routes to replace the relatively inexpensive transport from N. O. to the cities of the U.S. Midwest along the Mississippi River.

None of that is trivial and LA is just one state. Florida is a populous state and a peninsula. It is not going to escape unscathed from sea level rise, no matter how much climate denialism is uttered and fostered by the GOP establishment there.

From a June 2018 article in the Guardian. ” Nasa announced last week that the amount of ice lost annually from Antartica has tripled since 2012 to an enormous 241bn tons a year. ”

Are you a conservative? Libertarian? Republican? Do you get annoyed because you think that liberals and scientists are trying to ruin your buzz? Are you upset that these people are always trying to make you …. worry? Well , here is a potential solution. Have you ever tried facing your fears? As Betrand Russell once wrote, ” Worry comes from not facing unpleasant possibilities”.

As LiD has pointed out, oxygen levels in the oceans are dropping rapidly, and this can potentially create another global disaster. Warm water holds less oxygen than cooler water. Simple fact of chemistry that anyone with even a smattering of study in ecology, biology, or the environment would know. When the chemistry of the sea makes a big change, you get lots of fossils. So here is another reason to examine our overall national philosophy of kill, exploit, extract, consume, and pollute. Rep Steve King brags about the accomplishments of western civilization, but , in my estimation, a civilization which is too stupid and narcissistic to realize that it is destroying its home through thoughtless behavior is no more special than a bottle of wine where the yeast have consumed all the grape sugar and have managed to intoxicate themselves to death with its excreted alcohol. A really big flaw in our otherwise interesting civilization is that it does not seem to be able to grasp the scope of its interaction with the world around it, something they could have learned from any one of a number of successful , long lived “primitive” societies, if they had bothered to study them instead of just murdering them and taking their land.

P.S. The good news in all this is that if we do manage to drive ocean oxygen levels low enough to make them anoxic, we can help create a new geological strata that future generations will be able to exploit for hydrocarbons!

Future generations of what, you might ask? I don’t know. Maybe an evolved species of rat? Ratus sapiens?

But I’m not worried! In fact, I think that is funny! Life goes on. Within you and without you.

Now visit the informative Weather Underground Wunder Blog and call up the Wundermap within the Maps & Radar list. Uncheck the Weather Stations. Now scale to show the NA continent the North Atlantic, Europe and parts of Africa, then check the Sea Surface Temp Anomaly.

Yiu could also try checking the Radar and Satellite options for more information. Oh and study the blog there.

If we, by our short sighted selfish behavior create a world that refuses to allow us to survive on it any more, what can you say? At any moment the universe could throw any one of a number of world ending events at us and wipe us from the scoreboard, just like that. Fortunately, the odds of most of those events happening today or this century are not very high, so we all just carry on. Except for one event, which is of our own making, and which is predictably going to sink our boat if we ( i.e., humans) don’t wake up . That event is fossil fuel induced climate change.

Some of us science types who know that warm water holds less oxygen than cold, and that carbon dioxide impedes infrared release to space, recognize that a number of well documented trends show that we are fucking up our living space. We also know that we have the technology available to possibly prevent or postpone the destruction of our living space, and thus to prevent the suffering and premature death of millions if not billions of human beings.

But those of us who are beholden to a fat arsed comb over baby named Trump, and to the world oil oligarchs whom he represents, tend to believe that things will be A-OK if we just do what the Der Donald and the advertisers tell us to do and buy and consume what they want us to.

The choice is between listening to what scientists are saying, and to believing what a lying, cheating, swindler is saying. Shouldn’t that be an easy choice?

Let’s start with sea level. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently published a report called Underwater, which examined more closely the impact of future sea level rise on coastal cities in the U.S. The UCS took as their baseline that global mean sea levels would rise about 2 meters between 2010 and the end of the century — a projection judged as being very likely in several reports published last year.

…

A sea level rise of two meters in 2100 now looks like wishful thinking. Recent satellite data from NASA and the European Space Agency, show that ice losses from Antarctica are causing sea levels to rise faster today than any time in the past 25 years. The rate of melting has risen three fold since 2012

…

or the small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific there is no good news. The rise in global sea level is the unsteady platform on which king tides and storm surge from hurricanes and cyclones routinely create havoc for coastal communities and essential infrastructure.

I did look at this study. Only time will tell if their projections are at all correct. In their high scenario they project 2 meters of SLR above 1992 levels by 2100. In their medium scenario they project 1.2 meters and in the low scenario they project .5 meters.

They have a projection in the high scenario for 2030, so we could check back and see how they are doing in 2030.

The earliest low scenario projections is for 2060, but I am sure we will be able to double check their projections by 2030 (a mere 12 years).

I am very skeptical of their numbers and think all three of their scenarios are high, with the low scenario running three times the current rate of 3.1 mm/year.

At 3.1 mm/year we will have a bit over 12 inches of SLR by 2100 (measured from 2000 – using 100 years). Last century we had a bit over 7 inches of SLR.

If you look at … you can see that the rate has actually dropped over the last couple years.

You are miss-characterising the gist of that, did you not notice:

Since the start of the altimeter record in 1993, global average sea level rose at a rate near the upper end of the sea level projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports.

On which it has already been explained that the last AR5 estimates are conservative being the product of negotiating a report that governments with vested interests have agreed to under-sign. Besides and related of that conservationism more is now known about ice sheet dynamics with every new piece of information not giving any grounds for increased optimism.

Now where the hell are you getting this, ‘we have cooled after the el nino’ from?

Do you not realise that ENSO is a feature of warming and not a cause. Any change in sea level is going to be localised and means somewhere else the rise is greater than it may have been before the warming.

You need to study a good primer on earth system dynamics – a text on Oceanography would be a good start.

Those are the numbers and the rate of SLR has dropped from 2016 to 2018.

That’s ENSO. Specifically, big EN events. Stop trying to pretend that interannual variability has any bearing on the long term trend. It doesn’t. Even decadal variability doesn’t affect the multi-decadal / centennial trend. Or acceleration thereof.

This is denier bullshit 101 stuff. Up your denier game into something more interesting please.

So I know the temperature drop was caused by el nino, because I said so.

It still happened and still affects the SLR rate (dropping from 3.4 to 3.1 mm/yr).

Wow. STILL trying to pretend that ENSO has an effect on the long term trend. Straight after an explanation that it doesn’t.

Idiocy or trolling?

Repeat in case of idiocy:

Stop trying to pretend that interannual variability has any bearing on the long term trend. It doesn’t. Even decadal variability doesn’t affect the multi-decadal / centennial trend. Or acceleration thereof.

No need for undue concern, of course, but these are indicators that are hard to ignore.

I envision numerous additional incremental indicators of climate change to show up in the years ahead, until something really big breaks, and then the consensus will change and people will get real smart real quick. The really big question now is will the fossil fuelists like Putin managed to stall or slow down energy transition long enough to allow acidifying/ anoxic oceans, sea level rise, and increased inland flooding to destroy enough food production , housing , and general infrastructure to cause a major human population decline, or will it just be annoying and only a little painful. Someday, somebody will find out.

Oh, and one other thing. Climate change and energy transition was an opportunity for the USA to lead the world in something important , but the fat arsed combover baby is killing that. Instead, he is making his Russian oil oligarch buddies richer. Future generations fleeing the US will have a hard time convincing the people in their new lands that the US was once the most powerful nation in the world.

“This is almost certainly a conservative estimate,” Nerem said. “Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that’s not likely.”

It is the future trend stupid (keeping in mind BBD’s immediately previous), stop trying to go down the up elevator.